Frances Haugen takes us inside Meta HQ
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to share key details about Meta’s headquarters.
Video Transcript
ANDY SERWER: So I want to ask you, I've spent a bunch of time in Menlo Park, obviously, not as much as you have, at that-- on the campus. What was that-- what was it like?
FRANCES HAUGEN: Oh, you know, the Facebook campus is so fascinating to me as like an architectural object. So most people aren't aware but Facebook has the largest open floor plan office in the world. It is a quarter of a mile long, it sits 5,000 people. It is such an amazing-- you know, medieval societies built cathedrals because they were societies that were oriented around God, right? Like you had these Gothic arches that lead your eye upwards like to the heavens, right?
Facebook's campus is a physical manifestation of their obsession with flatness. Like the idea that we are all on the same level, that their leadership style is we have metrics, people can do whatever they want to move those metrics like we embrace the freedom of like individual employees. But when you don't acknowledge that power differentials exist, you actually reinforce those power dynamics. And I think there are things around a situation where flatness is obsessed over, means there's actually not a lot of space for single leaders to come forward to say there is a problem or we need to make a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain.
ANDY SERWER: I think it was Orwell who said everyone's equal except some are more equal than others.
FRANCES HAUGEN: Are more equal than others? Yeah.
ANDY SERWER: And then that's not even acknowledged.
FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah.
ANDY SERWER: That's a fascinating--
FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah.
ANDY SERWER: Fascinating point. I want to ask you about this question about whether Facebook--
FRANCES HAUGEN: Actually, can I give you [? one more little quick one? ?]
ANDY SERWER: Sure. Please. Yeah.
FRANCES HAUGEN: To give you a sense of how absurd the space is, so Facebook is obsessed with 15 and 30-minute meetings. It's like they're very efficient, everyone's-- they're obsessed with the word crisp, like are your documents crisp, is your explanation crisp? The space is so large that I would regularly walk 15 minutes, 10, 15 minutes to go to a 30-minute meeting. And so even that level of absurdity, that it is more important for the building to be flat than to be functional for us to go to our meetings that-- it just kind of shows you the blindness of that religion.
